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  • Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Proverbs 121. The proverb today is to be

  • like a fish out of water. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone is

  • like a fish out of water, he or she feels uncomfortable in a new environment or is

  • completely unfamiliar with one's surroundings or activity. Yeah. I mean

  • this one is kind of easy to understand if anybody's ever gone fishing and they

  • see a poor fish if you pull it out of the water, if you put it on a boat or you

  • put in a bucket , you can tell it really feels like you know, you, you pulled it

  • into another world. t's gasping for air. Its flapping kind of like that and it

  • definitely is very uncomfortable. It doesn't know what it's doing and is you know

  • really lucky if it's just really trying to survive. Its fighting for its life

  • practically. This is kind of what we mean if somebody feels like a fish out of

  • water they feel totally and like they've been pulled out of their environment.

  • They've been pulled out of their comfort zone. And they feel uncomfortable in this

  • new environment or this new situation. Then we say somebody feels like a fish

  • out of water. Okay. Let's continue. Let's give a few examples here. Example number

  • one. That job is not suitable for me. If I were to get a job in that company I

  • would feel like a fish out of water. Well maybe this person knows this and

  • realizes this that I'm not going to put myself into that position because I know

  • that I won't I won't feel right. I won't feel comfortable there. So I wouldn't

  • even want it. I would feel like a fish out of water.

  • Okay good. Or number two here. I thought I was talented and a good dancer until I

  • entered that dance contest and I realized I was out of my league. Again

  • maybe many of the other dancers were far better than he was. He thought he was

  • good. Maybe he went to the disco and he thought he looked cool. He thought he

  • looked better than the other dancers. But when he was up against

  • the professionals, he realized he was out of his League. And he said, " I felt like a

  • fish out of water." Like I don't really belong here. They're much better than me.

  • I really can't compete with them. So he felt like he was a fish out of water. All

  • right. Great and let's look at this last part of the

  • note of the earliest citing of this proverb. So the earliest they could

  • find it comes from Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales. Of course it's a very

  • old famous classic novel. I don't know. I don't think that he was the one that

  • invented it. He probably used it. It was probably around already at that time, but

  • that's the earliest finding. Well the earliest citing they could find of it

  • and this was like the part of the line from where it was stated. So of course,

  • you have the ellipsis here. You have those three dots which means they've

  • taken something out. They'd just given you the important part. " ,,, a monk when he is

  • cloisterless. Yeah. Well monks usually belong to a

  • cloister. That's the like the monastery they belong to. That group or that

  • organization. So. " ...a monk when he is cloisterless is like a fish that is waterless. "

  • So that was the original phrase here. That is waterless, of course it

  • eventually formed into what today we say like a fish out of water, But I guess he

  • was saying that a monk. If he didn't belong to a particular organization or

  • monastery, he was just on his own. He just wasn't very comfortable. He's like you

  • know, a fish out of water or a fish that is waterless. Anyway, I hope you got it.

  • I hope it was a formative. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.

Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Proverbs 121. The proverb today is to be

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